Music Theory Lesson – Progressions #3

Musical Map – Progression 1645

When playing a melody, there are many positions you can start from. Each starting point has a different feeling on the entire melody segment. While you can start anywhere, it’s best to start on a harmonizing note; even better if the harmonizing notes are different. Usually the starting point is dictated by where you left off in the last melody segment.

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Instrumental: Partly Cloudy + Wizard Tower

JeFF Zaborski Compositions

I just finished a great composition for a movie. It’s a two piece composition featuring clouds. The first part, Partly Cloudy, resembles milky, fluffy, clouds parting slightly to let some sun rays seep through, then closing up to repeat over and over again. The second part, Crooked Wizard Tower, also features clouds but these are dark, lurking, storm clouds. It’s about this tall, crooked, wizard tower with the clouds still in stale air.

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Music Theory – Piano Chords #4

C Minor 6th

Last time we learned 9th Chords. Now that we’ve reached lesson #6, we’re going to cover 6th chords. These are very interesting chords because they add some color to your progression. They give your progression something different without pushing it’s limits and keeping a stable chord. These are great and create very diverse tones depending on it’s surrounding chords. I’m starting to use them a lot in my music. Let’s start building our chords!

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Instrumental: Borderline Evil

BoomBoX Beats

A new Hip-Hop Instrumental track has just been released by JeFF ZaBorski, called: Borderline Evil   This track was designed to have a sedimental feeling to it.  The chord progression makes the listener start off with a happy feeling; then discomfort, which is suppose to resemble a hardship; followed by release, full of easy-going and content.

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Music Theory – Piano Chords #3

C Minor 9th

Last time we discussed the different kinds of 7th Chords. This time we’re going to talk about a new chord, which just so happens to be my favorite.  It’s called a 9th Chord.  When adding a 9th, you don’t want to use too much.  A 9th has it’s best results when used in small quantities. You can think of a Major 9th as of ‘something being there’ while a Minor 9th as ‘something missing’. That ‘something’ being a sedimental feeling toward something. What kind of…

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Instrumental: Cataracts

Retro Gamer

This new instrumental was created as Video Game music but can easily be used as a Hip-Hop Instrumental.  This particular track was first sculpted with the colors: Purple, Blue, Teal, and a touch of Orange.  The purple and blue represent the dark mysterious sky and shadows.  The teal represents the moonlight and the orange as lanterns.  While the color yellow isn’t enough to list, the brass instruments are pronounced so well that you could almost see it as the flicker from the orange lanterns.   When…

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Music Theory – Piano Chords #2

C Diminished 7th

Last time we learned about Building Chords.  The chords we learned were: Major, Minor, Augmented, & Diminished.  Hopefully you’ve been practicing these and have them down well now because the chords we’re going to learn today are the same chords, there’s just an extra note tacked onto the end of them. The extension note to these chords are called a 7th.  There are 5 common types of seventh chords: Major 7th, Minor 7th, Dominant 7th, Diminished 7th, & Half-Diminished 7th.  Seventh chords make any chord sound…

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Music Theory – Piano Chords #1

Chords?

Now that we understand progressions and how they move based off the chart, we can build chords instead of single notes at each position. A chord is a combination of notes that harmonize together. When notes are played in certain combinations, they create more complex wavelengths. The interesting part about this, is that certain chords have the same wavelength of specific emotional vocal patterns. And when people display emotions, people subconsciously pick up on them and feel them. That’s just human psychology. If I were…

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